46 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



visitor to Scotland begins now to understand why its air and 

 scenery are so invigorating. 



To enter into the sentiment of loneliness which heather can 

 bestow on a landscape, the traveller need only strike some 

 ten miles to the east of the Garry, over the hills, at the back of 

 the little village of Moulins. Here he will find himself sur- 

 rounded with melancholy treeless hills and mountains, running 

 down from Benygloe, with the little Brerechen burn winding 

 through them, now half lost amongst a chaos of stones, now 

 emerging into a crystal stream, and actually here forming a minia- 

 ture pool under a three-inch cascade. But it is full of little bright- 

 coloured trout, and ministers to the wants of many mountain 

 sheep and countless birds, like a thread of joy running through 

 their innocent lives. Here a blackcock gallantly defends the 

 retreat of his three cheepers by feigning excessive lameness, 

 fluttering up and settling immediately with loud out-cries. 

 The sympathetic visitor follows him while the little ones escape 

 amongst the heather, and soon he leaps up and speeds over 

 the hill exulting that any one should fall into his trap. There 

 lapwings flap about in an aimless manner, as if they, too, would 

 imitate the tactics of the blackcock. Wheatears flit from 

 mound to mound; corbies utter their forbidding croak from the 

 hill-side, where a dead lamb is probably lying ; little parties of 

 curlew, with their scimitar-like beaks, dash over the dreary 

 moorland ; jackdaws, and occasionally a gull or two, scream in 

 the distance ; and a marsh-harrier beats the furze on the 

 acclivities with as much regularity as would a pointer range for 

 his master. This moor is a paradise for ornithologists. Birds 

 are everywhere, and birds seen in their most confiding moods, 

 for man's feet seldom penetrate this wilderness. As we 

 approach the burn, what is all this screaming and fluttering? 

 A couple of ring-ousels fly out of a cairn of stones where their 

 nest is, and hover round, now resting on a rail with expanded 

 feathers and much insulted dignity at their privacy being 



